With respect to conventional image recognition systems coping with forgery of paper currencies and securities, various types have been proposed and put into practical use for apparatus in which from image inputting to image creation are implemented within a closed system such as color copiers. Furthermore, as image readers such as image scanners, personal computers, and image creation apparatus such as printers improve in performance and decrease in price in recent years, forgery in an open system has constituted a social problem. Countermeasures against it have been variously studied.
In any case, the fundamental image recognition processing consists of steps of processing obtained image data (input data) by an image data processing portion (feature extraction portion), comparing image data output by the image data processing portion and certain patterns previously stored in a nonvolatile memory or the like, and outputting the results of recognition to a control portion.
To carry out this recognition processing, it is possible to adopt either a method of installing dedicated hardware or a method of installing software. With decrease of prices of apparatus such as scanners and printers, it is also necessary to reduce the cost of the system for performing recognition processing. Preferably, this is achieved in software. Furthermore, as processing capabilities of CPUs have improved in recent years, practically acceptable processing speeds have been obtained even with recognition processing by software.
Where mounting software is considered, a method of mounting into a personal computer and a method of mounting into an external device connected with a personal computer such as a scanner or printer are conceivable. Usually, personal computers are higher in processing capability than external devices. Furthermore, personal computers have larger storage capacities. Therefore, it is realistic to mount on the personal computer side.
Specifically, forgery prevention software including recognition dictionary and engine is incorporated in a driver for an external device that should be prevented against forgery. Then, where various external devices are used, data is sent and received always via the driver. Therefore, recognition processing owing to the forgery prevention software is reliably performed. Thus, forgery prevention can be accomplished.
While software can be easily loaded into personal computers, an environment thereof can be easily altered. Therefore, a driver for such an external device can be developed, and image data can be input and output between the external device and the personal computer using the developed driver. Then, no forgery prevention software is incorporated in the developed driver. This enables unauthorized use.
It is an object of this invention to provide a device such as a color printer, color scanner, and computer used in an open system with an image processor and recording medium capable of reliably preventing unauthorized use.